Welcome to the DARKSIDE ..

[James McDonald]

Ben Duncan wrote:
> After putting it off for years, and since my College going son
> has bought a laptop for his graphic artist courses, I went to
> Best buy and bought my wife one of those $499 Gateway laptops.
> Fairly Decent machine - AMD ML32 64 bit processor, but has
> Windows XP home on it. My son's has XP Media edition, so
> now I have let 2 MicroSoft computers' into my HOUSE of Linux ...
>
> Anyway, what turned out interesting was last night found 12 -
> count 'em - 12 Wireless networks from my kitchen table.
> 2 were TOTALLY unsecured, the rest were reported to be secured,
> but used WEP key with the 5 digit key - and all were
> easily cracked . Example: SSID of EAST1234 and it's password
> was EAST1 .... ANd most of them had the workgroup  as ...
> You guessed it .. WORKGROUP or MSHOME ...
>
>
> Sheessss'.... will Winsloth Luser's ever learn ?
>
>   
LOL hmm well I'm fairly sure that they haven't been to SANS.

When the Internet started it was all about enabling the free interchange 
of information globally. Now it's all about stopping people getting to 
the stuff they shouldn't while not impeding access to everything else. I 
have noticed that the zero configuration setups most appliances and 
windows boxen come with mean you are immediately susceptible.

Wireless networks aren't noted to be secure. I think if you are going to 
run one then you need to have an appliance that can let the clients 
connecting create VPN tunnels back onto the wired network.

IIRC the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK doesn't recommend 
any sort of wireless infrastructure for financial institutions going for 
FSA licensing.